How acclaimed singer-songwriters Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle formed an Americana folk super-duo and created a must-hear album.
Shawn Colvin’s story is not over.
The singer-songwriter was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Trailblazer Award at the Americana Music Association’s Americana Honors & Awards ceremony last September. Indeed, she has some impressive achievements behind her. Her 1989 debut album, Steady On, picked up a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and she followed that up with the 1998 Record of the Year and Song of the Year Grammys for her Top 10 hit “Sunny Came Home” from the previous year’s platinum-selling A Few Small Repairs. She’s even voiced a character on The Simpsons.
But Colvin’s recent accolade may be a tad premature. If 2016’s Colvin & Earle, the product of her collaboration with Steve Earle, is any indication, her craft is continuing to evolve.
It was Colvin who first proposed they pair up to perform together. She was a fan and knew his songs, and she figured their styles were different enough that it could be an interesting dynamic. The shows went over so well they decided to make an album together, co-writing songs and picking interesting covers that include the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” and Emmylou Harris’ “Raise the Dead.” The originals range from the politically charged pseudo-spiritual “Tell Moses” to the deceptively breezy “The Way That We Do” to the grim breakup reflection “You’re Right (I’m Wrong).”
During a backstage conversation with Colvin and Earle before their Dallas concert last September, she reflects on the honor she’d accepted two days prior.
“I was pretty stunned and flattered,” she says. “But it makes you think, you know, if this is a lifetime achievement award, am I done? But that’s certainly not the case. It was just nice to be recognized. I don’t know if it made me nostalgic, but it made me think about the possibility that I’ve had an effect not only on the audience but maybe other artists too, which is really gratifying.”
There’s no “maybe” about her having an effect on Earle, though.
“I’ve been a fan for a long time,” he says. “We first met, I knew what I was looking at. She’s a real, live folk singer and can hold down a room by herself. We have that in common. And she recorded ‘Someday’ at a point when there was absolutely nothing happening in my life or my career. Emmy recorded ‘Guitar Town’ and Shawn recorded ‘Someday.’ ... They were little glimmers of light out there and probably part of how I found my way back.”
By “back,” he means back from the dark hiatus between 1990’s The Hard Way and ’95’s Train a Comin’, years consumed with drug addiction that reached its nadir with arrests for possession of heroin, cocaine, and weapons. His troubles with the law ultimately led to 60 days in jail and, as of our interview, 22 years and 10 days of sobriety.
As it turned out, recovery from addiction is another thing he and Colvin have in common, which Earle didn’t know until their first tour together. Earle says his compulsion to use faded with time, but the temptation has come back in the last few years, a period that includes his seventh divorce. Colvin compared her addiction to squeezing a balloon in how it morphed into other urges, like spending money and eating.
“We have two things going for us,” Earle says. “We speak exactly the same language, musically. And we have this shorthand that we have that’s about being in recovery, and that helps sometimes.”
Both, too, are masters at telling a story through song, though they came about their gifts differently. Earle cites Texas songwriters such as Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Billy Joe Shaver who were his contemporaries and teachers, and adds, “I learned as much about telling a story from guys my dad and uncle used to hunt deer with, who were great storytellers. I think a lot of those other guys have that in common with me, that there is a tradition of actual storytelling — just sitting around and telling a story.” Colvin says it wasn’t until A Few Small Repairs that she wrote narrative songs. “Before then, I was a lovelorn lass with an acoustic guitar, sort of opening a vein on every song, a romantic, tragic vein,” she says.
Their approaches to songwriting differ, too.
“I think Steve ... was just one of those people who sprang out of the wild and was meant to write songs,” she says. “He’s prolific and just has great instincts and can do it. I was a very reluctant songwriter, very insecure, and didn’t think I could do it. Just had too much fear and too much reverence for people who were great songwriters, like Steve.”
She credits frequent collaborator and co-writer John Leventhal for easing her into songwriting when she wrote lyrics to his music.
Here, Earle pipes up: “John Leventhal needed you to write lyrics to his music. That’s the part you leave out that I think is really important. Because John Leventhal was not a lyricist.”
Colvin laughs and concedes, “I guess it was the perfect storm of need.”
Earle, on the other hand, muscles his way through songwriting and “cuts to the chase and cuts through the crap,” she says, and working with him gave her another boost of confidence as she overcame hesitancy and learned to trust her own instincts.
Earle had a bad taste in his mouth when it came to co-writing from the beginning of his career, when he worked for publishers whose goal was to get a hit single. He found some of his best lines were cut for being “too lofty.” Colvin, too, had experience trying to churn out pop hits, an experience she describes as “antiseptic and soul-crushing.”
But for whatever reason, their pairing worked. Asked if it was simply because Colvin was able to keep up with his pace, Earle says, “Absolutely.”
“There’s six [original] songs,” he says. “They all arrived completely differently. Some of them are pieces I brought in, and some are pieces she brought in. ... It sort of organically had to come from all directions for us to get it done.”
The two wrapped up their joint tour to make time for their upcoming projects. Earle, who patterns his albums after other classic records such as the Beatles’ Revolver and Neil Young’s Harvest, will be recording a Honky Tonk Heroes-inspired country record at the famed Arlyn Studios in Austin, Texas. The songs are mostly written, except it “needs one more political song and one more chick song.” Colvin’s next album isn’t as fully formed, but she has some ideas “percolating.” She wants it to be conceptual in nature, because she’s got a few stories to tell.
Colvin & Earle was released last summer on Fantasy Records.
From the January 2017 issue.
Photography: Alexandra Valenti